Issues installing snow leopard

Hello,
I have a 17 inch macbook pro shell that i wanted to put a hard drive in and install snow leopard on. I am trying to boot from the snow leopard cd but it will just hang at the white apple logo screen. Doing a verbose boot I see it goes to the boot.efi file, then loads the mach_kernel. Then it displays the root device UUID, then loads the drivers. Next it loads the Extensions.mkext file but it gives a crap load of dots and then stops. Is this a bad disk?

Maybe not a bad disk. Is it for your machine and not from another Mac? The install disks are model specific unless it's the retail version of Snow Leopard. If it is the correct disk, then it might either be bad or perhaps scratched.

The disk is a retail version. Basically I got the laptop without a working hard drive so I need to install it from scratch. Are there any tricks to it? Do I need to have leopard or tiger on the disk first before i can install snow leopard? I have been googling it all day and people say I dont but dont give any clear instructions besides letting the disk go but it doesnt get past that point.

No, there are no tricks. You have a bad disk. Check the bottom for scratches or other physical marks, maybe it just needs some cleaning.

Since you have a legal copy, I'd suggest finding a friend who also has a retail copy and give theirs a go to see if the optical drive is functioning properly.

What version is your MacBook Pro and what OS version is the retail disc? (10.6.0?)

I think what member "Stretch" is getting at is important. Late model MacBook Pro machines can only accept the Snow Leopard disk that is specific for that machine. The retail version of Snow Leopard does not work on them because of the newer hardware.

If you have another mac and install disc you could throw the HDD in that computer install SL and then put it in the 17inch MBP and it should work fine.
What you are describing does not sound like the computer is too new to use a retail disc. When that is is the case it should come up with a screen that says you must restart your computer.